Kurt's Blog

    Rear window seems to be described as a classic. That's part of why I was excited to watch it. However, I found myself a little unsatisfied after finishing the movie. I wouldn't say it was a bad movie by any means, but I just felt like I was expecting more from the plot of the movie. There are a couple reasons I have for feeling this way.     Mainly, I felt like I expected more of a surprise at the end. Jeffries is shown throughout the whole movie to potentially be losing his mind, so it's a little disappointing to just see the movie end with him simply being exactly right. And this would be fine if it felt earned, but in this situation it doesn't. Jeffries doesn't really solve anything himself. He figures out that Thorwald's garden is different, but no evidence is ever found with that until Thorwald just flat out admits at the end of the movie that he hid his wife there. No, Jeffries just has Lisa sneak into the apartment, where she just finds a ring, and Th...

     In the reading for the week on narrative, I came across the concept of an anti-hero. Basically, it is a form of a protagonist who is not necessarily morally perfect. They have questionable motives and often are complex characters, yet they're still presented as the main character of the story. I think this is such an effective element for a story to have, and personally I love any sort of cinema that has an anti-hero. I think it leads to just more complex characters and therefore more complex plot and themes.     One show in particular that I think has used this very effectively recently is House of the Dragon. The show focuses heavily on a King named Viserys, who seems to mean well, but also makes questionable decisions and doesn't always do the right thing.       There is also heavy focus on a character named Daemon. Daemon is criticized by many people in the show and he definitely can be described as hostile and maybe immature. Y...

     Weirdly, I was excited to watch Dr. Caligari. No, I did not think it would be a super great movie, but I thought it would be so fascinating to see the strategies and techniques that a century old movie would use. They had so little to work with then, yet still could make movies that so many people loved to watch. The thing that struck me most was how slow the movie's pace was. First of all, every scene took longer because they needed to add a separate text screen to show the audience what was being said, due to there being no live audio. With this, and just the movie going at a slower pace than I am used to, it felt like not much of a plot really happened for a movie that was over an hour long. Also, it was interesting to see the acting and special effects, both of which were admittedly low quality but were probably very strong for the time. Overall, despite not believing the movie would be great, I had an enjoyable experience. Especially from an academic perspectiv...